


What a reaction

by wordswehavesaid



Series: Tumblr prompts [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, science puns abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 11:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5125448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswehavesaid/pseuds/wordswehavesaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry's finally worked up the nerve to start clueing Oliver into his feelings. Too bad his hints go right over the other man's head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What a reaction

**Author's Note:**

> Everybody still ignoring the bad titles? Ok? Good. Enjoy the fic!

Oliver knows when he’s being played with. And he’s come to expect it from a particular individual.

But right now, he really has no clue what Barry’s game is.

He doesn’t think the younger man had much of a plan at first. It seemed an accident. The Flash had decided to accompany him on a patrol one wintry night, not seeming to realize that it would involve a lot of standing around on rooftops.

“Can we maybe go back inside?” It wasn’t necessary for Barry to be staying with him, what with his speed, and Oliver appreciated it. He’d have appreciated it more if the other vigilante would’ve complained less and stopped his teeth from chattering in some attempt to make him feel guilty that had somehow been working.

“Do a few laps if you’re cold,” he suggested instead.

“You know,  according to the second law of thermodynamics, you’re supposed to share your hotness with me,” the younger man grumbled.

Oliver had turned his head sharply. “What?”

Barry’s eyes had widened, and if he’s not mistaken a red flush had spread beneath the cowl. “Uhh, I just meant that- heat transfer- um, you know what? Never mind, forget I said anything!”

He’d just given a little shake of the head, chalked it up as some random factoid the scientist so often spouts, and continued his watch.

Except Barry hadn’t stopped there. Still hasn’t stopped. Like some irritating little test he’ll wait till they’re alone and hail him with some fact or sidle up to him and quietly murmur a line from what sounds like a scientist’s children’s book.

If he tells Barry to stay with him on a mission it’s, “Hey, we fit together like the sticky ends of recombinant DNA.”

He’ll be happy with a job well done and tell Barry so, maybe even throwing a genuinely felt “Partner” in there, and get, “You are the photon to my photosystem: you excite my electron until I reach my reaction centre,” in return, rushed if warm.

It’s when he calls Barry up to see if the younger man’s interested in helping on a mission that he finally snaps. “What’re you doing tonight?” He’d asked as an opener.

“Nothing,” Barry had replied quickly, followed by a desperately-trying-to-be-casual, “would you maybe wanna put your alpha helix in my beta barrel?”

“Ok, seriously Barry, that’s enough. I have no idea what you’re saying, or why, and it needs to stop. What are you even trying to tell me?”

“I’m  _flirting_  with you,” the younger man groans in exasperation. Then, “Oh damn, I said that out loud.”

All he can get out is a choked, “Yep.”

The line goes dead.

He works up the nerve a few days later to ask Felicity to help him look up some things. By the time he stammers through the first line, her eyebrows have risen to her hairline. “Oliver, why would  _you_  be interested in science pickup lines?”

He hopes to God he’s not blushing as he mutters something with the name Barry mixed in at his shoes.

“Oh!” Felicity squeaks. After a beat, though, her fingers are flying across the keyboard. “I can pull up a list that you can cross-reference with what he said, if you want a better idea about what he was trying to tell you. Feel free to look up meanings.” She helpfully vacates the chair after pulling up the browsers and doesn’t spy over his shoulder. Which is very fortunate as he gets to some of the later ones. The things Barry was insinuating he wanted to do with Oliver…

He looks up after a time. “How do I respond? If I wanted to, um, let him know I was–” Damn, he’s terrible at this, and feels strangely out of touch in an arena he’d considered himself an expert in for years.

But Felicity seems happy to offer aid, eyes lighting up as she retakes control over the keys. “Ok, it should be something cute and kind of sweet, but funny. Barry likes funny. And he loves puns, I mean, these are all technically puns but - ooh, I know the perfect one!”

And that’s how Oliver finds himself knocking on the door to the West home one evening - and he is praying that Barry is the only one in - waiting for the door to open with a single phrase running over and over through his head.

It is Barry who answers, eyes going wide with shock and mortification. “Oliver! Uh, wh-what–”

But he can’t afford to let Barry continue, adorable as it is, or he’ll loose the words. So he clears his throat, looking anywhere but the other man as he stumbles through, “ Are you a compound of, uh, Beryllium and…Barium? Because you’re a total B-a-B-e. Babe, that’s what I - damnit.” He knew he was going to screw that up, and honestly feels perhaps the most foolish ever in his life. Why the hell had he let Felicity convince to do this–

But he’s chanced a quick glance at the other man and freezes at the sight. A slow smile has bloomed across his whole face, eyes dancing with mirth and absolute delight. The other vigilante suddenly reaches for the collar of Oliver’s jacket and yanks him over the threshold, their lips crashing together. His hands find purchase on the other’s hips, and he tilts his head for a better angle, coaxing a moan out of Barry as he slips his tongue in the other’s mouth.

When they eventually break for air, he’s got the man pressed up against a wall, panting against each other’s mouths. He eventually gathers the presence of mind to kick out behind him and hears a satisfying slam of the door. “Is anybody else home?”

“Nope,” Barry tells him, eyes blown wide with desire. “Wanna head up to my room and form a covalent bond?”

He rests his forehead against the other man’s. “I hope to God that means what I think it does.”

There’s a sudden blur of motion and color and the next thing he knows his back’s hitting a mattress and Barry is straddling his waist. “It does,” the scientist tells him before reclaiming his lips.

And to think he’d long-ago decided the subject would have no real-world applications.


End file.
